


Cleave to My New Clan

by DinosaurTheology



Series: Brief, Brilliant Miracles [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Conversations, Cultural Differences, Cultural Sharing, F/M, Getting to Know Each Other, In Vino Veritas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3855379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My Lady's face is wounded, slashed open like a field dressed ram. Two Andrastians marrying after the fashion of the Avvar would be among the less bizarre things that I have observed this year."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cleave to My New Clan

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Dragon Age, but what an amazing series when even a minor character like Sky Watcher is so intriguing. This story won't make any sense at all without reading "Flesh, Blood and Bone," and hopefully the rest of the series that this is situated in if you like. This came about as a result of a lovely and intriguing comment left on said story by Merya.

Sky Watcher took a deep breath of the Skyhold air, high in the Frostbacks, near his precious Lady of the Skies and the stern face of Korth the Mountain Father. Sometimes, when the wind howled at night, it felt like the very breath of indomitable Hakkon, the lord of freezing death and a bane to Avvar, Lowlander and Inquisitor alike.

It was, by and large, a pleasant, bustling place. Few more people lived in the castle proper than an Avvar thane's hold, though he knew the Inquisitor's influence to be far flung across Thedas, more like an augur's, but those who did operated with a unity of accord that he had not observed among fractious Chasind, obdurate Fereldans or, especially, the soft, subtle Orlesians. The place had good bones and Herald's Rest, where he sat to take an evening meal of potatoes and mutton gravy with carrots and onions, always gleamed like the hearth in his home of old.

"Sky Watcher... is the seat across from you taken?"

He glanced up at Nightingale's face, pale as Andraste's Grace beneath coppery bangs, and shrugged. "It is there, so no one has taken it."

She furrowed her brow. It made her outrageously blue eyes gleam like the Veil fire he played with to communicate with spirits. "That's not what I--"

He chuckled. "I know. I cannot resist taking advantage of how... unexpectional... all of you always expect a tribesman's intelligence to be."

She slid her legs under the table. "A foolish mistake, serah."

He waved his large hand. "Do not feel awkward on account of my bad sense of humor. And Sky Watcher or Watcher will be sufficient; lowlander titles and courtesy make me uncomfortable."

"Yes... I suppose they would."

He scooped some gravy onto a hunk of dark, crusty bread and offered it to her. She accepted with slim, delicate fingers and nibbled daintily. "I don't know how you Orlesians, especially, keep up with all the names and titles you have for each other. I am Sky Watcher... my old chief is Morvan the Under, or Morvan. His son was the Hand of Korth or, if he was not in earshot, Blithering Idiot. It is much simpler."

"You Avvar like to wrestle, no?"

He nodded. "It is an uncommonly popular pass-time in the holds. There's not much else to do during winter, save spinning tales and making babies."

"Then look at the dance of Orlais' Great Game as wrestling with words." She smiled; it was a wicked curling of the lips that stirred flame deep inside his warrior's heart. "Think of it as spinning a tale and struggling until you cannot stand all at once."

"That would be a tale rich in the telling."

"Then you see? We are not so different."

"Perhaps." He bumped his foot with hers. "Although I would not go in a snowbank in those small things."

"Of course that's different..." She laughed, deep in her throat. "Orlesian shoes are the finest in the world."

"I will take your word for it." He took a long gulp of the icy lager--stored so cold as a courtesy of Skyhold's altitude. It was not the sweet meade that Avvar favored but... the temperature gave Fereldan's favorite crisp, amber liquid a personality all its own. "What is your opinion of the Warden and the Candle Girl?"

"Who?"

"Warden Blackwall and..." He drummed his fingers, working to remember an unfamiliar name from a tongue strange to him. "The woman from the north, Antiva... the one whose sole purpose is to carry a candle around, as far as I can tell."

"Josephine, the ambassador. The candle is so she can work on her ledgers even at night or in dark places."

"If you say so." He shook his head. "The Lady of the Skies hangs the sun, each day, and Sigfost the Great Bear pushes it and then eats it when the day is done. The sun is given so that we can work, and night is a gift so that we can rest."

"Most interesting." Leliana leaned forward, hands clasped, a bard's keen storytelling sense around. "I was always told, when I was just a little girl, that the sun was our long absent Maker turning His gentle face upon the world, searching keenly to find a soul that burned as warmly as His beloved Andraste's." She spread her palms. "There is no such soul, alas, and with each twilight he once again turns away."

"I don't know if your Maker is kind of cruel to leave you to your own devices, considering what the gods of the Avvar put us through from time to time." He studied the scars on her pale wrists. "I imagine that you know what I mean."

She tugged at the sleeves of her dress. "I do not."

Watcher laid his hugely muscled forearms on the table. They were covered from palm to elbow with raised, puckered whorls, covered with ink. It formed elaborate designs. "When I was a lad of sixteen summers, trained as a shaman for four of them, my Lady lead me to score my arms with a blazing dagger. The pain was unimaginable but lead me to my first vision, where I saw Her face. What vision came to you?"

Leliana offered her slender wrists for his inspection again, revealing circular marks on them, all the harsher and uglier for the fair skin they marred. "A Fereldan soldier named Harwen Raleigh nailed my wrists to a board; I passed out from the agony, white hot in my flesh. When I came to he told me that he was going to cut off my fingers so that I could no longer play the lute, tear out my lying tongue so that I could not sing." Her hands curled into fists. "You can see that neither fate befell me."

"Was it by your hand?"

"Yes. Both Raleigh and Marjolaine, the woman who betrayed me."

"'It is a brilliant vision whose fulfillment brings about a traitor's death.'"

Leliana's eyebrows knit together. "I do not recognize the quotation."

"You couldn't. I just thought it up."

She chuckled. This was, perhaps, a man like the Iron Bull--one whose rough, brutish exterior hid a mind of exceptional subtlety. "Is that what a shaman does, Watcher?""More or less. Avvar come to me, seeking the Lady of the Skies' wisdom. Sometimes she doesn't speak directly--or doesn't give a pile of august ram's shit about whatever they are nattering on about. I've learned a certain amoung of speed on my feet."

"An absolutely essential skill in my line of work, too, Sky Watcher."

"So before I allow you to draw me any further from my question... what is your opinion on Blackwall and your ambassador?"

She shrugged. "I believe they are both fine people. Both are impossibly naive about matters of the heart--Josie is an absolute baby when it comes to love--and so they are falling into the trap of les couers perdus. I would advise her, if asked, one lost might never be recovered." She toyed idly with a strand of red hair. It glimmered in the candlelight. "I might tell him the same thing, if it comes to that."

He pushed his empty bowl away, so that the tavern girl could collect it. "You lowlanders make things so complicated. In an Avvar hold they would have long since gotten on with matters."

"A downfall of what we call civilization, Watcher."

"I do not see what problem either of them will find. He would give her strong sons; she would raise them to be wise, honorable and temperate. And it's not as if they have not already spoken the words of flesh, blood and bone."

"What?"

"They aknowledged that they were of the same matter, and the same spirit, before the Inquisitor and his companions went on their journey to the Emerald Graves. I had assumed they had made a decision."

"How did you know this?"

He rolled his pale eyes. "I watch the face of the Lady of the Skies. She would be a poor mistress if she did not tell me things, from time to time."

"But... even I did not know that this happened."

"Perhaps your nightingales kept it from you?" He chuckled. "The Lady does not lie, but some of her creatures can be capricious."

"It think that she might have meant something different by those words than what your people do."

"It is a foolish woman who lays claim to words that she does not understand."

"I agree. And Josie is an ambassador. Words and the manipulation thereof are her life, the air she breathes. Why do you think she would speak so rashly?"

"Sometimes a person's words in a time of strugglecan reveal much about the inner workings of her heart. Her turmoil before his departure must have been great."

"This is true." She cast furtive glances to each side, as if each table concealed an Antivan Crow. "You will keep this misstep to youself, Watcher... no?"

"Certainly. It will be especially easy since none was made."

"What do you mean?"

"Their feeling is clear to any man watching; their intent is not clear, even to them. She has not sung any hymn to your Maker, he has not untied knots in any sacred rope. They will rectify the matter one day, or they won't. If they do I will be here. Unless, of course, I am not." He grinned--entirely too broadly in Leliana's opinion.

"I should think that two Andrastians would want a Chantry mother at their wedding, if such a thing ever even should or could occur."

"My Lady's face is wounded, slashed open like a field dressed ram. I stood alone in a swamp, bashing demons' heads in with my hammer. And now I sit in a hold of my people, lost to time and rediscovered by a prophet. Two Andrastians marrying after the fashion of the Avvar would be among the less bizarre things that I have observed this year."

"You speak the truth, Sky Watcher." Leliana stood and smoothed her dress, brushing away crumbs from the bread he'd given her. "I must go and attend to some business, but we will speak again. Your perspective is... original."

He drew deeply on another mug that the serving girl had brought him. "I live but to serve my Lady, and she would have me serve your Inquisition. If you need me then I am available."

She bowed and withdrew. He watched her go, especially the interesting movement of her hips beneath tight blue cotton. A most interesting woman, and she wore her scars like an Avvar spear-wife. Thoughts flickered across his mind, for a moment, but he pushed them away. It was well known what a red-headed mother portended--Morvan had learned that to his shame, even though the wily old demon had turned the situation to his advantage--and this woman's brats would be truly outstanding little monsters indeed.

Watcher leaned his chair, against the wall, and laced his hands over his stomach. The members of his new hold came and went; he saw Flissa, the former bartender, soaking up tales of valor (or something like it, at least) from Krem and the Iron Bull. Their ways were strange, overly complicated and could be inexplicable, but he would cleave to his new clan.


End file.
